Burial - Temple Sleeper

Burial - Temple Sleeper
This past December, Hyperdub broke with a two-year tradition by not releasing a Burial record at Christmas time, but now Keysound makes up for this fact with Temple Sleeper. Though it's odd to see Burial away from Hyperdub, the move isn't totally unprecedented. Burial remixed label boss Martin "Blackdown" Clark back in 2006, and if anyone's going to have access to unreleased Burial tracks aside from Kode9 it's him, dubstep chronicler that he is. My initial guess was that "Temple Sleeper" was one of those sought-after dubs from back in the day, but its multi-part structure has more in common with Burial's recent tunes.

Whenever it comes from, there's something off about "Temple Sleeper." With each release Burial has found a way to bring something new to his formula, but this one feels like a leftover from the period between Kindred and Truant. Maybe it's because the pumping main section—which already feels like a "Loner" retread—is borrowed almost wholesale from an old trance tune with a vocal sample added for effect. The first tonal shift takes us into an all-too-brief detour through barbed-wire breaks, before Burial drops the track into a glowstick reverie that feels totally out of place. We've heard Burial go overboard before, but even then ("Come Down To Us") it was endearing; here, it feels tacky. In the mythology of Burial, maybe this is fitting: last year we found out he was a real person, so maybe this year we learn he's only human.